Inviting food into Carlson Library? This thuggish administration has already trash-canned most of our main campus library’s scientific books and journals in short order. Now this! Call it “creeping desecration" and yet another example of how Jacobs Inc. is failing the students and faculty of this campus by deliberately undermining its once-dignified quality learning environment and by bulldozing its traditional landscapes of intellectual decorum.
Dr. Carlson may have to return from the grave to personally to right these wrongs. First on his list of things to do is knock on the door of a certain derelict library dean who perceives his primary duty to be pimping for Papa John and campus food services instead of preserving and protecting sacred library space.
16 comments:
You're totally full of crap. Students eat everywhere already, including the library. Maybe it was different in the 20's, but not anymore. It gives more freedom to the students and if that bothers you, find a new job.
" ... and after you have spilled and slobbered onto the keyboards and spat upon the monitor screens and soiled what's left of the books in Carlson, feel free to step outside and pee on the walls."
During a budget cutting session during the 1980's, then President Glen Driscoll declared : " The library is the heart of the University. We need to protect it. " He was right.
I find eating in the classroom to be a terrible distraction. I forbid it. I think it has no business in the academic areas. Do we come here to eat or to learn? Seems like eating is more important than learning nowadays.
If you're concerned about the hygiene implications of the new library and food policy, read the following:
http://www.it-care.co.uk/information.htm
I am a stakeholder that the admin will not ignore for long. They have already lost the fight on Issue 2: Good job Ohio!
What Ben forgets that by allowing food in the library, you/he invite/s rodents and insects who continue his anti-library, anti-book work by destroying what he and his well-paid predecessor (who is paid well over $200K for his failures...yes, Gaboury) have started. Mouse usually defacate after eating, and what that leads to is junta virus that will sicken the custodians first. I am surprised that Goldy on the Health Science did not warn him about this, but what does he care about when he makes over $500K???
This is a public health concern that administration is ignoring because the junta virus attacks the respiratory system, and it will attack students as well, not just the library faculty (they will not be that for long is Ben has his way) and staff. It is ironic how ignorant and arrogant this dean is: he is all for students, yet setting them up for disease. Ben is a liability to this university and should step down voluntarily.
As I have read in the Columbus Dispatch comments early this year, even those folks in Columbus know the library has been hi-jacked from the faculty (in the wake of Jake's surgical reconstruction of UT) and now it is a part of COIL - College of Incompetent Leadership. The library should be restored to its autonomous status and serve the needs of the entire university not just this COIL that thinks it is the future. Its faculty should be allowed to retain their faculty status - from what I am hearing, he is seriously threatening that also. These faculty are active scholars in their fields where MLS is the terminal degree, but Benny - our false philosopher thinks it is not a legitimate discipline. Ben, do us a favor and go and take Gaboury and Jacobs with you. Your time is up!
Having supported computers at the University of Toledo for 20+ years, I can tell you are some nasty workstations out there. I don't eat in front of any computer that I don't have exclusive access to. I certainly wouldn't eat near one that has potentially had hundreds of users, whether they were eating or not.
Here's my suggestion to anyone using 'open food' labs: Keep your own usb keyboard/mouse in your backpack. (If you Buy an Apple USB keyboard and a usb mouse they have usb ports built in).
Students eat everywhere, it's true. I suppose if you don't have the will to enforce the rules, you might as well legalize it.
I would be curious: just what sources does Ben use to justify his misinformed food policies. Research libraries are restricting food to libraries. Maybe his knowledge of libraries and information science outweighs what thousands of experienced administrators do not know. It's got to be EDUCAUSE (more like a readers' digest for administrators cutting corners).
We must give it to you, Ben: pizza may soon be classified as vegetable, and you will be the hero of many a well-nourished students ready for the future. Chancellor Goldy and Pres Jake at HSC will be real proud of you, dude....
BTW: Is that pizza sauce on the image for this blog entry that students are wading in? Once all the books are thrown out from this "museum of books" you referred to in an earlier IC article, the 4th floor will be ready for pizza sauce parties.
Re: it.care.uk
So. These entrepreneurs will fly their crack team of industrial hygienists over from England twice a week to sanitize all the computer keyboards in the public kiosks of Ben's Postmodern Anything-Goes Library at $130 per computer (plus airfare) to protect UT's playful main campus freedom-and-pizza loving multitasking students from contacting en masse a possible hantavirus lurking amidst the food detrius putrifying between the keys?
$130 X 200c X 3dpw+$rtaf X 52wpy = bukoo$$$$$$$ per anum (not counting a class action lawsuit by any possible hantavirus victims)
Another multi-million-dollar Jacobs Era debacle I'd say!
(Frankly, my heart goes out to the book worms of Carlson, who are being near-starved into extinction).
Meanwhile, I wonder what the Mulford Library food policy is over on the Health Campus?
http://www.it-care.co.uk/information.htm
This is a business trying to sell a product, not a reliable source for decision support, nor it is a reliable information on libraries? Cite a study that is scientific.
The ARL Office of Leadership and Management Services (not smart enough for COIL) published a study on managing food in the library, but wait -- that was in 1998 -- eons ago, but cockroaches liked food then as they do now.
A must-read for neoliberal anti-professor cranks:
http://www.insidehighered.com/
news/2011/11/14/study-finds-u-texas-faculty-are-productive
Some context.
"This is the coolest man alive. He is halarious and a genious. I dropped a skittle in the middle of class it bounced around on the floor he stopped teaching turned around said... "was that a skittle?" then ran across the room grabbed it off the floor and ate it. Awsome class you do learn things"
Food in the class...great atmosphere to lecture in....rustle, rustle, crunch, crunch, *smack*, *smack*...,BURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP! Yeah for "STUDENT CENTEREDNESS!"
After several years of watching this blog, and numerous instances of hope for UT being dashed by blog drivel, I am signing off. No I am not part of the various power groups alluded to earlier, nor am I currently employed at UT. I am an academic who believes in shared governance far more than UT faculty believe in it themselves. I had hope for UT faculty, no more. I paraphrase an earlier comment - you have participated in the destruction of your own rights and privileges - you deserve no more than what you have today - which is no governance rights.
Not a problem for online students and teachers...
Food and hygiene issues are just two among countless similar academic, economic, social and logistical problems in higher education that vanish instantly the minute the student is using their own laptop to log into online classes remotely, as opposed to contending with the labyrinthine inefficiencies (and food particles and bacteria) of the medieval brick and mortar campus and classroom.
But you know, college should be more than gaining information....for years students could stay home and read books if all they wanted was information....they need to be inspired, matured, influenced, guided, taught to think critically...fat chance doing that online!
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